The surprising complexity inside Apple’s power adapter

Have you ever wondered what’s inside your Macbook’s charger? There’s a lot more circuitry crammed into the compact power adapter than you’d expect, including a microprocessor. This charger teardown looks at the numerous components in the charger and explains how they work together to power your laptop.

Seems rather overengineered to me. Providing some stable DC power should be possile to achieve a lot simpler.

You can build a minimal AC-DC power supply with a transformer, a bridge rectifier, a capacitor and a linear regulator. The problem with linear regulators is that they’re inefficient and generate a lot of waste heat, and the problem with transformers is that they’re big and heavy. The output is also not particularly stable and linear regulators tend to drop off under load.

Basically, simpler circuits are rubbish when it comes to powering something as complicated as a modern computer.

The bigger transformer will contain more material (ferrites and copper are relatively expensive), and will cost more to ship accross the world. Exchanging that for some passive components, a few semiconductors, and a bunch of engineering hours is probably quite a profitable way to go..

A really standard ‘charger’ would probably just be a normal powersupply.

A desktop computer or server has it’s powersupply which does the conversion usually on the inside.

I assume laptops, phones and thus the macbook don’t have that. My guess is that one of the parts of a charger is big and can’t be made smaller so it wouldn’t fit into the flat device itself.

So for those devices something smaller and prettier has to be used then a normal powersupply.

For a bunch of years smartphones all had their own chargers, then the EU said: they have to use a standard micro-USB-charger.

I assume the EU can’t do the something similar for laptops, notebooks, ultrabooks and netbooks. At least not 1, they might be able to make it something like 5 generic chargers. Because different systems draw different amount of power and because of that need heavier duty components which makes it more expensive (no use in producing and paying 2 or 3 times as much for a device which won’t be fully utilized).

Also from the article:

“Most of the cost of the charger goes into the healthy profit margin that Apple has on their products. Apple has an estimated 45% profit margin on iPhones[20] and chargers are probably even more profitable.”

I think Apple is being a dick in a 3 ways:

– charging you more for their charger

– still creating chargers with a crappy cable (I also had an Apple laptop many years ago, also broken cable)

– because of the above people are more likely to buy a cheap imitation from some strange vendor and are less safe then if their were ‘official imitations’ which might have a proper CE-mark from Germany for example.

Although there are also devices on the market from for example China which have the CE-mark, but have never been tested in Germany.

Maybe this is all part of the original: Reality Distortion Field that Steve had:

I assume the EU can’t do the something similar for laptops, notebooks, ultrabooks and netbooks. At least not 1, they might be able to make it something like 5 generic chargers. Because different systems draw different amount of power and because of that need heavier duty components which makes it more expensive (no use in producing and paying 2 or 3 times as much for a device which won’t be fully utilized).

All laptops can use a generic 15-24v 90W charger as long as they have the right barrel plug. There is no need for a whole lot of different chargers. They just need a standard connector.

Not really sure how you would and still maintain compatibility with non-magnetic USB C cables. You’d almost have to have a double connector that wraps an empty USB C shape in a mag safe outer layer. The computer would have both, and Apple’s adapters would use the mag safe. Any other method would, I think, break compatibility with the USB type C standard and I doubt it’s worth the trouble to bother. Apple didn’t even bother to attempt it with the new Macbook which, after all, does use USB type C.

– charging you more for their charger [/q] Really? The last time I compared the market for official chargers in the USA, Apple was one of the least expensive at $85. Toshiba, Dell, and the others I checked all wanted even more than that. Toshiba was particularly ridiculous, as they wanted to sell me a charger for a Satellite L745 at a whopping $109, plus shipping. I don’t know how things stand in other markets at this point, but here at least, Apple’s official chargers are a good deal by comparison. I think $85 is just a bit too expensive for a charger yes, but I’d rather pay $85 than $109.

[q]- still creating chargers with a crappy cable (I also had an Apple laptop many years ago, also broken cable)

What the heck are you doing to your chargers? I’ve had Apple chargers for years, and not a broken cable or connector. That’s far more than I can say for the laptops that have those crappy barrell-type connectors I might add.

- still creating chargers with a crappy cable (I also had an Apple laptop many years ago, also broken cable)

What the heck are you doing to your chargers? I’ve had Apple chargers for years, and not a broken cable or connector. That’s far more than I can say for the laptops that have those crappy barrell-type connectors I might add.

Even the article mentions the cable of the Apple charger is the weakest point and many people have problems with it.

The cable of any charger will always be its weakest point. That’s obvious. Even given that, my Apple charger breakage has been zero while other laptops I’ve had have experienced multiple breakages usually at the barrell connector end of the cable.

Both charges seem to contain cheapest capacitors available – thereby no surprise that they are not reliable.

Otherwise I can’t see almost anything unneccessary in Apple charger (except ID chip, which is located in connector anyway). At least Apples charger identification pin is connected properly – compare it to Dell chargers, where ID wire (connector central pin) is weakest and connected directly to serial RAM chip inside charger and is main cause to charger malfunction.

It’s informative, in different ways (it’s more of a comparison) like; Can an (ipad) charger be more cheaply built? Clearly. What are you getting if you make those compromises? Well, I find meeting safety specs and it actually meeting the spec on charging time because the power is cleaner to be quite compelling reasons to prefer a properly designed and manufactured module.

Regardless of what these units might be priced at, components aren’t put into the part they have to certify safe, for no reason.

And, referring to other comments, I see USB-C for laptop bricks as step down from magsafe. YMMV, apparently.